Argument against teachers refusing to give you a 100% score

Tags: real life, school.
By lucb1e on 2012-04-12 19:21:33 +0100

You certainly know or have heard of this kind of teacher who never gives anyone a 100% score (called A+ I think in America, or a 10 here, or a 20 in France..). It makes no sense you think, you earned that score didn't you?

You sure did, the teacher is being illogic and a bad teacher. Good teachers do what they should good, obviously. Their job is to teach us certain knowledge, preferably as much knowledge as possible while also keeping us as happy as possible. This is probably a hard job seeing how few really good teachers there are, but the teachers not giving you that 100% score can be easily identified as bad teachers: They make you unhappy and you won't try to get that score next time, and thus you learn less.

Now about why the teacher is illogic. When you ask why you got a 9 instead of a 10, they tell you that nobody is perfect and that there is always room for improvement. This only makes sense if there was no room for improvement the task would be much too simple (like adding 2 and 5 together, which makes 7 and is the ultimate answer to the problem) or you are God herself. Or himself, or itself, depending on your religion.

So if it makes sense, then why is it illogic? Well logic states that 2 and 5 makes 7, or in their case often: Every mistake is a point less. If I got a list of 20 words to translate, when I get 3 wrong I will have a 7 (out of 10 of course). In this case it's hard to not score the maximum score when you get them all right, but incredibly enough there are teachers which do (I once had that, you should have heard the classroom. We whined until we got the right mark, but it worked lol). If you know what I'm talking about, you probably remember another task where you or someone else really did their best for and were sure you were going to get the full score, when the teacher gives you a 9 out of 10 and tells you their standard argument as a reason for it. Here it is much harder to say "Yes but I really did my best on it!" because that is 'relative', just as their 'but it can always be done better' is. They don't define what you should have done better, perhaps they don't know themselves, but "you could have" (right).

Now the illogic part: The teacher is supposed to know everything about the subject. If they think something deserves a 70% score, they have a reason for it. There were some things they found could have been done better (namely 'A' and 'B'). And Peety who scored 60% also could have done 'C' better, thus a lower score. They ought to have some understanding of when it's "good" (e.g. when they can't say "you could have done 'X' better"), and let's assume they have. Now if they tell you you didn't get the 100% because nobody is perfect (there is always room for improvement), they are actually not following the logic they just made for themselves. They might as well give you a 1/10, the lowest possible score here, alone with the rest of the class "because nobody is perfect anyway" and they just threw away logic anyway.

This kind of teacher should be called mentally incapable of common sense, and be moved to the position of the cleaning lady where she can be of use. Next time anyone tells you this, link them to lucb1e.com/!invalid-argument. I'd love to hear their response. Most likely they will hold on to their statement simply because they don't want to give in. In that case, also link them to How to enjoy being wrong. If that still doesn't work, you can be sure they either didn't read it or didn't understand it. Or a combination of the two. Either way they are not being fair. Go to a higher ranking person if in any way possible ("Teacher Z gave me a 9 out of 10 but can't give me anything to improve. I would really have liked to get a 10/10 but I just don't know how I can... it's demotivating really, could you help me?", this works best face to face. Try to look genuinely sad or upset). If they tell you the same, try to be as unfair as the teacher is. You can hardly give them low marks, but you can prank them :) Let me know if you prank them :D Or also let me know if this helped you, that's why I write this and hearing that stimulates me to write more ;)

Good luck fighting illogic people!

Oh one more thing: "Life's not fair" counts as illogic too. You can substitute that by "there is always room for improvement" and follow the above recommendations.
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